Time's Seasons Saga: Human Nature
by Sinister Scribe
Summary: Part three in the series. The Cylons are attacking, one of our heroes is missing and it's all going to hells. Rated for adult themes and language.
1. Chapter 1

_Ta-dah!!_

_Here we are with chapter 1 of part three!!_

_I strongly suggest that you read the first two parts in this which are Bad Blood and Growing Pains. Then this will make a whole lot more sense. _

_Uh, this may have shades of Star Trek over it because I'm watching Next Gen right now and have been while writing this whole chapter. _

_But I just bought the first four seasons of BSG and I'm working up to a marathon of the whole lot. I suspect I will be very tired afterwards. _

_Read and enjoy, reviews are love. _

_Chapter 1: Damage Control_

"Status report!"

Appearing to be twenty years younger or not, Bill Adama, Admiral of the Fleet and patriarch to the remnants of humanity, commanded respect. He strode into the CIC, tugging briefly at his uniform jacket to straighten it as he came to the command deck.

The President followed him in, not a half step behind. While everyone's attention remained on their appointed tasks, they all found it impossible to ignore their leaders. She took her place at his side and looked up at the dradis screen. Dee was ready at her console, two fingers supporting her ear piece.

"A base ship just jumped in, sir. They're loosing fliers. We haven't got much time, they're close."

"How close, lieutenant?" Adama couldn't exact the distances between green and red spots on the dradis screen. That took a level of expertise that only Dee had.

"Damn, close sir. They're practically at our door." Dee was multitasking furiously as she answered her superior.

"Somebody raise Edric Adama. I want him out and in that frakked up flier of his as of ten minutes ago!" Bill was already running this battle through in his head. Playing out the chess pieces, working out where he could hit hard and fast. Calculating how to save as many as possible and lose as few. He was too battle weary to think he could get out of this completely unscathed.

"He's already on the flight deck. Suiting up now." Somebody answered him, he didn't know who and didn't care. In situations like this, it was sometimes better to have individuality take a second seat to the betterment of the whole.

Good Gods, was that a Cylon thought? Had he ever thought that before? What the hells was he…?

"Bill?" Laura's hand touched his arm, electricity sang along his nerve endings and he was yanked back into the here and now like he'd never left.

"Where's Colton? We could use some of her crazy ideas right now."

"She hasn't reported in with the other one?" Saul growled with half a mind on the conversation, he was a little busy saving the collective hides of the Fleet while the President and the Old Man got all touchy feely.

"No one has heard from Colton, sir." Dee brought in.

"What about that gizmo of hers? The sonic shocker. Knocked the frakkers out before. Could do it again." Saul offered.

"Colton was working on it in the guest quarters. It's still there." Laura offered. She hated this. She wasn't military. She had nothing to do here. She couldn't stand to be useless while her people were out there dying.

"Vipers are in the air, sir. Commander Adama and the Betty leading formation." Dee reported.

"We need that sonic shock." Bill growled. "Who's closest?"

"Old Man, I've seen that woman's work space, that thing could be anywhere." Saul glanced away from ordering his underlings about. "We don't have the time for a search mission for the damn thing."

"I know what it looks like. I know where it is." Laura leant over the lit up console giving her face a greenish cast. "I can get it."

"That thing weighs a tonne. You'll never lift it and lug it here in time." Saul frowned around his eye patch.

"Colonel Tigh, I can sprint at sixty kilometres an hour and bend tempered steel. Of course I can get it." Laura snapped.

Bill looked between them and weighed his options. He looked at Laura, he couldn't go. He couldn't leave the CIC when organising a Fleet-wide FTL jump. He was needed here and she wasn't. She could do it, she was more than capable. Why was he hesitating?

"Do it." Bill ordered her and then turned back to dradis.

Laura reached down to her brand new skirt, seized it in both hands and pulled. The skirt split to mid thigh revealing her new garters. She did the same to the other side and looked up to see Saul staring at her. She kicked off her heels and shrugged off her jacket to reveal a very brief camisole underneath.

"Hold this." She tossed the jacket over Saul's head, she caught Bill's smirk as she did so, but she was out the door before Saul could pull the blazer down off his face.

Laura had never run so fast in her life. Part of her thrilled in this, she hadn't had the chance to cut loose yet. To realise her full potential in this amazing new body of hers. People yelled and dived out of her way. Her stride was long and her feet were whisper quiet as she sprinted along the shadowed steel corridors. She saw a knot of people in the bend of the corridor up ahead. No time to go around. What she did next happened on instinct rather than on thought.

Hitching her stride and gathering herself, she leapt.

Right up and over the crewmen's heads. She kicked off the bulkhead wall, grabbed hold of the support beam over her head and swung off it around the bend to control her landing. She landed without missing a step and sprinted along the next bend without losing one step of speed.

"What the hells was that?" Jean La Forge stared after the disappearing back of the president of the twelve colonies and turned to his camera man. "Come on!" They bolted after Roslin.

Laura heard all of this in a vague kind of way but she was too busy to be worrying about the Press. They wouldn't be able to keep up with her anyway. She saw the stairwell between decks and bypassed the steel steps altogether. She leaped over them and dropped the twelve feet between decks. Rolling with the impact and coming back to her feet with a bounce. She was nearly where she wanted to be. Two more corners, another set of stairs and the third door along.

Careening off walls, dropping down another stairwell and she was at the door. She spooled the lock with a flick of her wrist and bounded inside. Now, where was it?

She tossed the workspace in a matter of seconds. Cloth weaver, food synthesising chemicals, doohickey, what's-it and a thingy-ma-jig but no sonic shocker.

Frak.

Where? Where would Colton put it?

She'd been working on it just yesterday, after the blueprints of her lab.

The ship bucked under impact. She could hear the individual creaks of the hull. Rivets turning a fraction of a centimetre in their holes. The groaning of the great battlestar around her as it limped through the sky. She was tired after her overlong career.

Laura didn't have much time…there!

"Under the bed, of course, where else would it be?" Laura flipped one of the bunks over and dragged the ugly machine out from under it. Laura looked it over. Of course, Colton had been making it smaller. It was now about the size of a shoebox and of a much sleaker design. Cables and plugs hung off one end looking like it was ready to be directly interfaced with the com system.

Whatever, Laura didn't know how it worked, she didn't care, that was for Dee and co to figure out. She just had to get it there.

Laura tucked the thing under her arm and bolted for the door again. She was beginning to get winded. It was a long way between GQ and the CIC and she had been throwing it full throttle all the way here. She threw open the door again and nearly ploughed into the men on the other side.

"What the…?!"

"President Roslin, we've just recorded your amazing sprint from the CIC to here," the reporter shoved a microphone in her face, breathing hard. "Along with these physical," he glanced down her body and Laura stiffened at his audacity, "enhancements, is there anything else that the Cylon 'inspired' technology has done to you?"

"Yeah, they've made me realise that I don't have to answer your stupid questions if you can't keep up with me." She grinned at him and then she was off.

La Forge could do nothing but watch her retreating back and then the soles of her feet disappearing up the stairwell as she flew up in a single bound.

"Did you get that?" He asked his cameraman.

"Yeah."

"Good, because we just proved the President of the Twelve Colonies isn't human anymore."

**$inister $cribe**

"Alright, who's dead?" Laura picked up a newly synthesised red cheese cheeseburger and bit into it with a gleeful kind of relish.

"We lost three Vipers, the _Cullan_ lost hull integrity and half her crew before managing to repair and jump away. All in all, twenty six." Billy read off the manifest.

"Shit." Laura abruptly lost her appetite and set her meal down. It had tasted fantastic mere minutes ago and now it tasted like nothing but ash.

"I hate to say it…"

"But it could have been a lot worse." Laura nodded and finally gave into her body's demands for more food. She munched on her cheeseburger once more.

"Without Colton's sonic shock and you hightailing it across the ship, we'd have been beaten to within an inch of our lives…or worse." Bill sighed and scrubbed a hand over his face.

"What about Edric's flier? Are the Cylons still blind to it?"

"Heh, _we're_ still blind to it. The damn thing's impossible to track."

"Well, as long as he's on our side I don't care."

Laura and Bill both turned to look at Billy. He cleared his throat and turned intense scrutiny towards his paperwork. Laura smirked. She really did love Billy sometimes.

"Yeah, the thing about that sonic shocker, it didn't work for as long this time. The Cylons recovered more quickly, they're beginning to adapt." Saul spoke with his usual optimism.

"Can Colton augment it, you think?" Laura offered up. "She did it before, she could do it again."

"We'd have to find her first." Bill grumbled. "Nobody's seen her since she pitched her last fit."

"Oh, is Edric…?"

"Driving everybody nuts looking for her."

"Uh…found her." Billy looked up from his papers. "She was on a transport when the Cylons jumped in, it had to divert to the closest ship big enough to take it on."

Laura raised her brows in a 'well?' expression when Billy faltered.

"It was the _Cullen._ Manifest says she was in the hanger deck when it blew."

"_What?!"_

Everybody spun in their chairs to see a battle weary Edric in the doorway. His eyes were wide and all the air had rushed from his lungs. His metal hand tightened on the doorway so hard that it warped the frame.

"She's not…she can't be…" His breath hitched and his colour dropped about seven shades. He doubled over, catching his hands on his knees. "Oh Gods…" He looked up at them with eyes that shone a little too brightly.

"She's dead isn't she?"


	2. Chapter 2

**Chapter 2 – One of a Kind **

Laura didn't know where she was.

She was travelling through dark corridors. Not on the Battlestar or even on New Caprica, but with a dusty earth floor and worn smooth stone walls. Obsidian and tall, stretching up high above her head. Smooth like glass so she couldn't get a grip to even try climbing them. Wind hustled softly past her. Rustling at her clothes. She looked down. Fatigues, she was wearing military fatigues. They were soaked, her hair was tied back in a tail but she could feel that it was damp. The air was thick and heavy with moisture, muggy and choking.

Where the hell was she?

She was on a planet somewhere. She could smell leaves somewhere distant. Heavy air. It was hot. Light fell in diluted shafts a long way down through the high walls.

She jumped when something huge and monstrous roared in the distance. It was so loud that she felt the tremble of the sound beneath her feet. The sound echoed off the walls and careened along the tunnels to bounce and reverberate back on itself in a loop of foreboding.

Laura swallowed hard and decided that it might be prudent to start walking and look for a way out. She turned one way and then looked the other, she froze when she saw a familiar figure standing at the other end of the path.

Colton smiled and lifted her hand in a silent wave.

Laura hurried towards her.

"Colton! Where have you been?" Laura called across the distance that separated them.

"Not far." Colton shouted back. "I was doing something important."

"Edric has been looking for you. He's turning the fleet upside down." Laura broke into a jog.

"Don't worry. I've nearly got it all figured out. It's beginning to make sense."

"What are you talking abo-whoah!" Laura skidded to a halt and her arms wind milled when she found herself on the edge of a precipice. A great gaping hole in the ground yawned between her and Colton. She staggered back and fell on her ass to save herself from tumbling head first into the inky blackness below.

"Watch your step, Laura. It's a dangerous path you're treading." Colton warned her. Laura scrambled back to her feet and dusted herself off.

"How did you get over there?"

"I came by another way. It's alright. We're both going to end up in the same place." Colton smirked at her and stepped forward. Dust kicked off the edge of the path and filtered down into the hole. Her toes hung over the edge.

"Colton, be careful!" Laura reached out as if she could stop the other woman over the distance that separated them.

"I'm fine, Laura. Stop worrying. I know what I'm doing. I always know what I'm doing." She shifted her weight so she stood right on the very edge.

"Colton, step away from the edge." Laura made her voice as soothing as she could. She knew that Colton was a highly strung individual but she'd never thought she would have gone this far.

"It's okay. I need to go. I'll see you at the bottom."

"Colton…"

Colton took a step forward and dropped down. Laura lunged forward without thinking. The last thing she saw, before the darkness swallowed her was the serene smile on Colton's face.

"COLTON!"

Laura bolted upright in her little cot aboard Colonial 1, chest heaving and stared wildly about herself. She swung her legs over the side of the cot and dropped her face into her palms. Gods damned dreams. Would they ever leave her alone?

"Madame President?"

Laura looked up to see Billy hesitantly poking his head through the curtained doorway to her 'private' quarters. It was a little past five of the a.m. and he was already up and dressed in his usual suit. He held a steaming cup of coffee in his hands and Laura decided to hell with her new aversion to caffeine and held out her hand for it.

Billy crossed to her and handed it over in short order. He watched her carefully as she sipped from the mug and grimaced as she scrunched a hand through her rumpled hair. Billy was one of the few individuals allowed to see her in this state and live to tell of it. The other one was her doctor and…well, Bill she supposed.

"Sit down." She invited him and he perched on the edge of the seat opposite her. She looked down at herself, belatedly checking if she was halfway decent and twisted her lips wryly when she saw that one of her new suits was rumpled.

"Edric Adama has already sent over more clothes." Billy supplied helpfully and Laura smiled softly. "Are you alright?"

"I'm fine." Laura forced another smile. "How is he?"

"Not good." Billy looked down. "He's still insisting that she's not dead and he's refusing to make any decisions on the funeral arrangements."

Laura rubbed at her face.

"Maybe I should talk to him."

"I'd think that…unwise." Billy said diplomatically and went on when Laura arched a brow at him. "He looked…unstable when I last spoke to him."

"Unstable how?" Laura immediately went on high alert. She could not afford to have someone like Edric Adama becoming a loose cannon. As strong and as ruthlessly military trained as he was, he could quite easily take out half of _Galactica's_ crew in a single attack. The man was dangerous.

"He's just adjusting I think." Billy looked away. "Can you imagine? Colton and he had been together for longer than we've been alive. Now she's suddenly gone."

"Still, I want options." Laura was saddened to admit it. "You've been looking through Colton's records. Storing them?"

"Almost everything is locked away in the vault in the Admiral's quarters. Everything is accounted for save for her father's journals."

"Journals?"

"Yes, there were four of them. I believe he wrote them towards the end of his life. They didn't make very much sense at all at the end."

"You read them?" Laura arched a brow at him and rose up off the bed. She liked the quiet on Colonial 1 in the morning. Before the vultures descended or the Quorum started their bellyaching. That reminded her, she had another meeting with them today.

Joy of joys.

"Uh, yes, I read everything."

"Good." Laura pursed her lips. She liked Colton. _Had_ liked Colton, but that didn't change the fact that the woman had a very dangerous mind and that knowing a little bit of what was going on inside it wouldn't be helpful. "Your impression?"

"Of the journals?"

Laura nodded and sipped her coffee.

"Nonsensical. Especially towards the end. It would seem her father went completely mad before he died. A lot of it sounds like Scriptures. It swings from scientific equations to quotes and snippets of Scripture then back again." He shrugged. "There's nothing of use there. I imagine she only kept them for the sentimental value."

"Colton, sentimental…" Laura stared out of the window at the passing stars. She could see the sparks of welding guns fixing the Cullen's hull. Massive depressions and holes beaten into the side being laboriously sealed one by one. Laura tilted her head and studied the damage. The report had said that the Cullen had only been struck once on the starboard landing bay. The reason for all the casualties had been the shuttle that had landed seconds before impact.

Anyway, enough wool gathering, she had business to attend to. She turned back to Billy.

"Are the showers working this morning?"

"After a fashion, I think the hot water's sporadic at best. This morning was…bracing." He grinned at her, hoping to cheer her up and partially succeeding.

"Alright, could you bring up the clothes Edric sent over, find something to eat if you haven't already taken breakfast and then try and free up some time for me to talk to Edric. I want to get a bead on his mental status myself."

"Yes, Madame President." Billy nodded to her and went to carry out her orders.

Laura watched him go and sighed. She did not look forward to the coming meeting. She was less enthused about it than she was about dancing with the Quorom later and wasn't that saying something?

She turned and looked out the tiny portal into the ocean of black and stars beyond. She thought about Colton. About her words of warning and about the grieving man in the ship not too far away. Laura had learned a long time ago to pay heed to her dreams. She wasn't sure entirely what she had believed about them. About the Scriptures and the chosen one theory but…there was no denying that certain things that she saw had a habit of coming true.

It wasn't a certain or reliable gift and Laura would be hesitant to call if a gift in the first place but the fact remained the same.

She couldn't shake Colton's words.

_Watch your step, Laura. It's a dangerous path you're treading. _

**$inister $cribe**

"You need to eat."

Edric gave no indication at hearing his descendant and William Adama, Admiral of the Colonial Fleet, was not happy about it. He straightened out from under the expansive wing of the _Betty_ and planted his hands on his hips. He looked at the ceiling as if the rafters could offer him some more patience and then back down at the long legs sticking out from under the hulk of stealth machinery.

"You're almost skin and bone. Starving yourself is not going to bring her back."

"Yes it will." The voice was muffled under the clank of tools and engine parts, but it was the first reply that Bill had gotten all morning. He dropped down into a crouch and glared at his great uncle. He gripped an ankle and yanked, scooting Edric out from under the flier.

"Care to expand on that?"

Edric laboured to sit up and Bill saw that his accusations rang a little more true than he'd liked to admit.

Edric was a big man and the lack of food on top of his Hybrid metabolism had hit him harder than it would a normal human. His cheekbones stuck out starkly, his overalls hung from his body and his collarbones stood out in sharp relief. His jaw was shaded with several days' worth of beard, his eyes were bloodshot and shadowed with exhaustion and his skin was waxy and pale under his amber colouring.

"No matter where she is, Colton keeps tabs on what's going on in the world around her. It drives her nuts not knowing what's going on. She'll watch the news. If I make myself enough of a travesty, the Press will report on it. If they show pictures, she'll get worried and come back to me."

"So this is all a cry for attention?" Bill drawled at him, ignoring the continued denial that Colton was dead. The woman was gone. As far as he was aware, being more durable as a Cylon Hybrid might give them the ability to withstand the vacuum of space, but not survive without oxygen. Colton, if she had survived being blown out of the shuttle bay and the surrounding explosions, not to mention the backlash of being caught on the tail end of a FTL drive, would have suffocated days ago.

"I've known that woman since before you were a gleam in your daddy's eye. I know her. She's sulking about something. She's punishing me. When she sees that I'm taking it seriously, she'll come home. It's not the first time she's done this and it won't be the last." Edric flopped down onto his back again and wheeled himself back under the _Betty._

Bill narrowed his eyes at the feet presented to him and resisted the urge to snap some bones. His mouth twisted as he mulled that over. Actually…putting Edric in the infirmary would allow Doc Cottle to do some intravenous feeding and sedating…might not be the worst idea he'd ever had.

Bill was still calculating exactly how fast he'd have to be in order to snap the leg hard enough to force Edric into the infirmary to have it properly reset. It would have to be a compound fracture.

"I'd advise against it."

Bill's shoulders hunched guiltily and he turned to look up at the shadow looming over him.

Laura.

His heart kicked in his chest and he went tingly all over just at the sight of her. He stood up, doing some looming of his own and grinned at her, showing a lot of white teeth and the wolfish look his face could get sometimes.

"Against what?" He attempted innocence but she saw through it.

"Trying to put him in hospital. You'll only piss him off."

"I could take him."

"He's still bigger than you are."

"It's not the size, Madame President, it's what you do with it that counts." Bill smirked at her and she blinked at him after a long moment. Then she dropped to her knees. Bill nearly choked on his tongue when he thought she was going to verify that statement for herself, but calmed himself when he realised she was just looking under the wing of the _Betty_ in order to better talk to Edric.

Bill growled and swallowed it when she glanced up at him. He could think of a lot better things for her to be doing down there and none of them had to do with his stubborn relative.

"Edric, can I talk to you a moment?"

The clattering that Edric was making stopped for a moment and then he carefully wheeled himself out from under the craft. He sat up and, crouched as she was, he was a full head taller than Laura even while he sat.

"She's not dead."

"You're killing yourself. You need to eat something."

"She'll come back. She always does." Edric was adamant.

"If you eat something, I'll arrange for you to be seen by the Press." Laura bargained like the pro she was. "One meal won't destroy all the effort you've put into your malnourishment but it will stop you from getting any worse." Her tone was dry but her face was serious. She was better at giving a little to get a little than Bill was. As far as he was concerned, he had rank and that should be the end of it but Laura knew that Edric wasn't thinking like a military man now, he was thinking like a man who had lost a chunk of his soul.

Edric let the wrench he was holding lower to his lap and pursed his lips as he thought it over. Laura could almost hear the wheels turning as he looked at her.

"One meal and they see me today."

"Alright, we're holding a memorial service for the lost members of the Cullen's crew. Turn up there and you're guaranteed some face time." Laura stood up as if she had let him know this from the start and brushed off her skirt. She should have known that an Adama would not let her off so easily.

"As long as Colton isn't mentioned. She'll be angry if we're wrong in front of everybody. I'll pay my respects to those who fell, but that's it."

Laura looked down at him for a long moment and considered it. It would be easy enough to have Colton's name stricken from the record and she really didn't need Edric losing it in front of the obligatory press core members that would be covering the event.

"Alright. She won't be mentioned." She held out her hand. "Come on, I hear they're serving green gloop in the commissary."

Edric looked up at her and, for a long moment, he looked much more like a lost little boy than a fearsome military man. He reached up and enclosed Laura's smaller hand in his. She hauled him up to his feet and slipped her arm through his. She led him gently towards the doors of the hanger bay. She looked up into his profile and then looked over at Bill. She caught his look and nodded subtly. She already knew.

Edric was on the edge. An inch from breaking point.

It was just a matter of where and when.

Damn it.

**$inister $cribe**

Laura stood silently at the memorial ceremony and listened to the priestess quote from the scriptures. She was struck then by the sheer insanity of her survival. Not a fortnight ago she had been giving serious thought to what kind of ceremony _she _would like to be remembered by in the not too distant future. Sure, they could still all be blasted out of the sky by Cylon fire at any given moment, but she suddenly had a very long –potentially indefinite- life ahead of her and she was slightly at a loss of what to do with herself.

That and she was _starving_.

Her stomach rumbled and she ignored the look that Billy sidled her way out the corner of his eye.

Colton's predicitions were coming true. All of them. She was starved, her patience for dealing with the Quorom and the Press had all but up and evaporated and –despite her genuine sorrow at the loss of more of her people- she kept getting distracted by mentally undressing a certain admiral.

The Three F's.

Frakked, frakked and doubly frakked.

Laura looked to her right and up…and up and up. Edric towered over her, making her feel small and fragile despite the fact she could bend steel with her bare hands. He stood beside her and, despite his meal earlier, looked worse than he had all week. She would not be surprised in the slightest if she learned that he had voided his stomach on his visit to the head after his lunch. He was dressed impeccably in Military dress uniform, appropriate for a man mourning the loss of his…well, what was Colton to him?

Laura suddenly found this more troubling than anything else she had been forced to deal with in the last week. She didn't have a name for what Dana and Edric had been to each other. Friends was too tame a word for it. Lovers…well, had they ever been such? Husband and wife? A couple? None of it fitted because there had been nothing else like them…until now.

Laura kept her frown internal as she mulled this over. She and Bill were the next generation of the insanity that was Cylon Hybridisation. What were they to become? Would they be some indefinable thing from now on?

Laura huffed a quiet sigh through her nose and resisted the urge to roll her eyes at herself. Here she was at a funeral, another set of empty metaphorical caskets, and she was worrying about her love life, or chronic lack thereof.

She took another peek up at Edric and tried to imagine. She tried, for an instant, to fathom what he was going through. She couldn't put a name to what Colton had been to him, what she still was to him, but she'd bet he had a thousand for her. They had been together for over a century. For fifty years after their nanotech treatment had first been administered and, as Colton had confided in Laura before her death, dreaming together for the entire time they had been frozen aboard the _Betty._

All that time. All those memories. Gone, snuffed out in a single senseless attack of wanton violence from their adversary. Another life stolen from this tiny scrapping band of humanity that limped through the galaxy searching for a home to call their own. Every life lost was an insult. A wound with salt smeared into it.

Laura watched a single tear track down over Edric's scarred cheek.

Some wounds cut deeper than others. Some lives were more precious. Some snuffed flames would never burn the same way again.

Laura felt tears burn at her eyes and she reached out blindly. She took Billy's hand and he glanced her way, giving her a small smile and squeezing her fingers to let her know he was with her.

Gods, they had lost Colton. She was really gone.

Laura had only known her for a handful of days but, in those days, her life had changed irrevocably and Colton had been a tower of insanely intelligent strength throughout it all. She had been arrogant and abrasive but also kind and funny. She had put Laura and Bill first, in her own way, deliberately needling the press in their conference at the big 'Hybrid Reveal' so as to distract them from the world rearranging reality that had been their leaders blurring with their enemies. She had answered Laura's questions, soothed her fears more by being honest than being delicate and she had looked upon Bill and Laura's impending union (because it was really only a matter of time) with nothing but her blessings and a generous snicker of amusement.

Colton had been Laura's friend. In her short tenure with them she had saved their lives, saved the fleet, given them clothes, fed them better than they could feed themselves and all of that in a matter of days. She had rearranged their entire lives and left a hell of a mark in her wake.

And there would never, _ever_, be another Dana Colton.

Yes, there would be geniuses and doctors and Geminons with a propensity for arrogance. There would even be pale skinned women with dark hair that insisted on wearing horn rimmed glasses that they didn't need…but there would never be another her.

Laura swallowed hard against the lump in her throat and tried to remain composed. She reached out with her other hand and took Edric's in hers. He looked down at her, surprised, but didn't pull away.

Laura smiled at him and tried to give him some strength. She tried to anchor him here. Tried to offer him some small comfort. She tried to communicate that he wasn't alone. That she felt his pain, even if only a tiny fraction of it.

Laura had only known Bill for a few years, but she couldn't imagine her life without him. It occurred her that she'd had the easy part of it during her cancer scare. She had only been dying, Bill had been facing the prospect of going on without her. She didn't doubt for an instant that he felt as deeply for her as she did for him. She was well beyond denying that. She hesitated to put a name to the feelings she had for him, but she knew they ran deeper than she'd ever felt anything before. She knew she'd never felt this way about anyone else.

What she didn't know was what the hells she had been letting stand in her way.

She looked up and across the room at Bill standing tall and austere on the opposite side. He looked her over, saw the tears silvery in her eyes, saw her hands clasped with Billy and Edric's and he nodded with a tiny movement. He understood.

Something passed between them then, something unspoken, a kind of wordless communication. A summary of what she had been thinking and the resonance that he had been thinking exactly the same thing.

Prolonged longevity or not, life was too frakking short for them to let this thing between them pass them by. Things had to change.

Starting tonight.


End file.
